Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park

Check in and the address itself does the work: one side faces Knightsbridge, the other looks straight into Hyde Park. The hotel occupies 66 Knightsbridge, a two-minute walk from the Tube, with Sloane Street and Harrods a short stroll away and Kensington Palace visible across the grass. It holds 141 rooms and 40 suites, each done by designer Joyce Wang in art deco lines drawn from the building's Golden Age past and its royal-adjacent site. Rooms face Knightsbridge, the park, or a quiet inner courtyard. Suites run to two- and three-bedroom connecting layouts for families, and the largest have dining rooms for up to 12 and outdoor terraces that hold 40 guests. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, the hotel's two-Michelin-starred restaurant, works from historic British recipes; The Rosebery serves afternoon tea; The Aubrey runs a late-night Japanese izakaya. The spa has 13 treatment rooms, a Traditional Chinese Medicine room, and a 17-metre twin-lane pool alongside a 24-hour gym. It is a five-minute walk to Harvey Nichols. Butlers, trained in shoe care by John Lobb, are on call for suite guests, and a Head Concierge arranges access to Sloane Street's boutiques after hours. The building opened in 1889 as a gentlemen's club and became a hotel in 1902; royal guests have entered through its dedicated entrance ever since.